War criminal and ex-Liberian president Charles Taylor transferred to UK prison

Charles Taylor was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

AFP Photo/ANP Pool/Evert-Jan Daniels

War criminal Charles Taylor has been transferred under tight security from The Hague to a British prison, where the former Liberian president will serve out the remainder of a 50-year sentence.

He was sentenced in The Hague by a special United Nations court for aiding and abetting atrocities during Sierra Leone's civil war.

The UK offered to accommodate the former Liberian president as part of a diplomatic deal to bring him to justice.

Taylor has requested that he be moved to Rwanda to see out his sentence, saying it would be easier for his family to visit him.

He has also said he fears being attacked in a British prison.

"Charles Ghankay Taylor... was transferred today from the Netherlands and the custody of the Special Court to the United Kingdom, where he will serve the remainder of his 50-year sentence," the Special Court for Sierra Leone's (SCSL) Freetown office said in a statement after the transfer was completed.

A chartered plane flew Taylor, accompanied by guards, to Britain and he "was handed over to representatives of Her Majesty's Prison Service", the court said.

A justice ministry official in London declined to confirm that Taylor was in Britain or say in which prison he would serve his time.

"We do not comment on individual cases," a justice ministry spokeswoman said.

Taylor likely to die behind bars

Taylor's historic sentence on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity was the first handed down by an international court against a former head of state since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg in 1946.

The former president, 65, is likely to die behind bars after the UN-backed SCSL last month upheld his sentence for arming rebels during Sierra Leone's brutal civil war during the 1990s.

Several Sierra Leone prisoners convicted by the SCSL court are already incarcerated in a special Rwandan jail which meets international standards.

Taylor was arrested in 2006 and sentenced at The Hague last year for "some of the most heinous crimes in human history".

As Liberia's president from 1997 to 2003, Taylor supplied guns and ammunition to rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone in a conflict notorious for its mutilations, drugged child soldiers and sex slaves, judges said.

Taylor was found guilty of supporting the rebels during a civil war which claimed 120,000 lives between 1991 and 2002, in exchange for blood diamonds mined by slave labour.

However the man who started a violent rebellion in Liberia in 1989, and was among the first to force children to carry guns, has never been prosecuted for atrocities committed in his own country.